People of India lifting their nation: US

US is transforming its ties with India to fight terrorism, said Condoleezza Rice.

The US is transforming its relationship with India as part of forming partnerships to face global threats like terrorism and nuclear proliferation, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Wednesday, while requesting the Senate for $6.2 bn for fiscal 2007 to strengthen its partners.

"Like terrorism and nuclear proliferation, many of the greatest challenges in today's world are global and transnational in nature. These threats breach even the most well-defended borders and affect all nations.

"Today's global threats require global partnerships, and America's diplomats are helping us transform our relationships with countries that have the capacity and the will to work on a global basis to achieve common purposes-countries like India, Japan, South Korea, Australia, El Salvador, and our allies in Europe," Rice told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

She referred to the new "vision" of President George W Bush's leadership in the world, a world she characterised as seeing major powers like India and China moving away from conflict to cooperation.

"... We are living in an extraordinary time, one in which centuries of international precedent are being overturned. The prospect of violent conflict among great powers is more remote than ever. States are increasingly competing and cooperating in peace, not preparing for war. Peoples in China, India, South Africa, Indonesia, and Brazil are lifting their countries and regions to new prominence," Rice told Senators.

Her budget requisitions for fiscal 2007 included $740 mn to Pakistan for fighting terrorism.

"In many states, our assistance will also help to bolster thriving democratic and economic institutions reducing the societal schisms that terrorists exploit for their own ideological purposes," she added.

Of the $ 6.2 billions being requested for Fiscal 2007, $739 million will go to Pakistan, $560 million for Colombia, $154 million for Indonesia, $457 million for Jordan, and $335 million for Kenya.

She said that aside from terrorism and nuclear proliferation, the United States will be involved in a wide spectrum of activities and in the process will also come to terms with a changing diplomatic posturing of America in a way that deals with emerging challenges of the international system.

"Democratic reform has begun in the Middle East. And the United States is working with our democratic partners in every region of the world, especially our hemispheric neighbours and our historic treaty allies in Europe and Asia, to build a true form of global stability: a balance of power that favours freedom," she added.